"skittering" poems
There’s a scurrying sound of something, burrowing,
Down in the depths of the dungeons, hurrying,
Skittering, pittering-pattering, scattering
When there’s a footstep, hear them chattering:
‘Here come the lords, and here comes the vassal,
Tripping their way through Cockroach Castle.’
Here come the ladies, all in their finery
Tripping and sipping the wine from the winery,
Trailing their silks, their satins and bustling,
Up in the ballroom, while the rustling
Army beneath the sounds of their razzle
Is down in the depths of Cockroach Castle.
Spilling their millions up in the glooming
Out from the flagstones, terror is looming,
Up on the awnings, hung from the ceiling
Under the swish of the skirts they’re stealing,
Dropping in hair, and burrowing faster,
Cockroach Castle is set for disaster.
Suddenly all of the room is screaming
Flapping of hands, the roaches are teeming,
Myriad hordes in the Carbonara,
Candles are tipped from the candelabra,
Choking smoke from the candles guttered,
Flames leap up from the ones that stuttered.
Clothing and flags and the awnings razing
Silks and satins flare up, and blazing,
Roaches in eyes and ears, they’re rasping
Clogging their throats, to leave them gasping,
There isn’t a lady or lord, or vassal
To come out alive from Cockroach Castle!
David Lewis Paget
Apr 3, 2014
Apr 3, 2014 at 1:08 PM UTC
Dusk!
With a creepy, tingling sensation you hear the fluttering of leathery wings!
Bats!
Glowing red eyes and glistening fangs,
These unspeakable giant bugs drop into view.*
Fibrous wings furred like a moth,
Big ears are just a membranous extension of antennae.
Flying in search of a flower’s pollen laden froth,
Silent except for the hum and squeak of echolocation.
Trap bats in attics, butterflies in nets.
No rabies feared, no bedbug bites to itch.
Clawed feet ****** and grab like praying mantis pincers;
Bloated stomach slopes like a pudgy beetle.
Jaws manipulate like an ant, excise like scissors;
Soft hair rustles like a wooly caterpillar.
They live in darkness, centipedes do too,
Come out at night like cockroaches tend to.
Skittering through the night like daddy long-legs,
Noses snubbed like bumble bee faces.
Wind turbines endanger bats,
Like fans endanger lightning bugs.
Only one percent of bats are vampiric,
Like only a small percentage of spiders are poisonous.
Dawn!
With a creepy, tingling sensation you hear the fluttering of leathery wings!
Bats!
Bats are bugs, aren’t they?
May 4, 2010
May 4, 2010 at 5:04 PM UTC
*I sat under a paper umbrella of the reddest hue autumn
and like an apple
I waited for you to pick me ripe
bite, smell my neck
and remember.
I sat on bench of grey weather boards
waiting to be thrown down upon them-
wanting to be pinned down upon them.
Feet on a rug of discarded
leaves, just like me.
discarded but beautiful.
still just a season long
season woman,
can you love me winter long?
Ill meet you on the snowy bench.
white puffs of apologises will float from my mouth.
my toes will shake and the fence we loved for being red
we'll love for being white.
Red will now slither to my ears and you will say things I can't hear.
And the stars will paint the sky too dark so we
can see that winter sparkles.
Spring is full of other lovers, this bench-
lovers that are not you and I.
And the playground is full of candy wrappers and mothers sneakers.
The trees are majestically green stretching and yawning and showing off.
The children bouncing, whining, crying, finding.
Spring is full of lovers but not us
so she gives my heart to summer
and glass doesn't melt so the places where I like to feel your sweat
are the places where they like to touch my body.
summer makes us reckless and the bench, our bench is being held together by the squirrels claws and the sparrows talons... they wait for us to scatter.
hot you kiss my dampness, damper.
hot you kiss my pain and sorrow. boiling all the past good voyage.
our fence has lost some posts as,
the children love to climb and kick
it will hold on, still.
but it won't hold-out and won't hold-in which is what fences are meant to do.
at least they should... they should choose.
Autumn, yes it's autumn ours. We are autumn lovers
with leaves of the book skittering beneath the empty slide.
We are autumn, smell like the burning leaves of who we were.
Smelling like the fresh cut wood, ready to have her rings counted
Autumn lover, hold my hand and tell me you are afraid.
Autumn lover, holding color golden like a circle round.
Hurry, before she blows me past the red fence,
Hurry before our secrets get caught by the wind and dance around the playground.
Hurry Autumn lover,
Hurry to remember that you loved me, once.*
Shannon April Alice
11/2/14
Nov 3, 2014
Nov 3, 2014 at 2:57 AM UTC
Darkness suffocates me.
Ever-present blackness fights to enter my bloodstream
Worming its way through my pores
While tendrils of grey fog claw at my eyes
Obscuring my vision
Suddenly a light appears.
The tendrils retreat,
Skittering into the surrounding shadows
White fire circled by a hazy purple brilliance,
Floating in my direction
A positive thought.
Possibility
“I am a good listener.”
Corny, yes
But I like that
For a moment, I like me
Connection
Brilliant fire envelops
Light radiates from within me
A supernova, I shine overwhelmingly
Before collapsing in on myself
With the light gone
I lie in darkness,
but not despair.
Glowing dimly,
A flickering ember sits in the corner
Hope
Nov 14, 2012
Nov 14, 2012 at 1:01 PM UTC
rescinding messages of longing and lust
cast off to the wind like a broken record
skittering, twisting down the street in early morn'
your laying to rest your tired conscience on me
like one of those lovers in a movie theater
brushed off like salt on a shoulder
twirled like a young girls hair mid flirtation giggle
i think we're dancing in the streets now
scuffing shoes against concrete
mind-melding as we soft shoe across the yellow lines
i'm kicking you to the curb
like a rock into a gutter
your blowing through me like a chilled breeze
shuffling past me hurriedly to another time
like a scarf mid swing o're a cold shoulder
i turn 'round swiftly to meet you
dizzily.
Oct 20, 2010
Oct 20, 2010 at 6:09 PM UTC
blue
green
brown
eyes
skittering
up and down
my back
tiny mice
without their
cheese
Jun 10, 2014
Jun 10, 2014 at 7:40 PM UTC
rats
run through the walls
scratching and chewing
and fighting over my crumbs.
i know your there...
i see your tails and hear your nails
skittering across the broken tiles
a inch or two of plaster
between you and me.
you chewing through
right by my tossing and turning head.
the sticky traps catch dust
the poison would **** the dog
so we are left to the
old rusty snaps
the blood stained
guillotine
sticky with caked blood and hair
of your fallen brothers
and sisters
and god knows
how many other relations.
i hate the snap
i hate the painful squeals in the night
i hate the ones that catch
but dont die.
i hate all that
but not as much
as
i
hate
rats.
Jul 23, 2010
Jul 23, 2010 at 9:31 AM UTC
I saw a gigantic tree.
Uprooted and on its side.
The great roots forming a mane for the snarling ringed face on the stump.
But the fallen beast is taken, it’s husk a Home.
A vibrancy of weevils, ladybugs, frog hoppers, Cockchaffers that’s skittering, scattered like a smashed ant farm.
Around its base were prehistoric ferns,
Curled and scaled like sand lizards’ tales.
Reminiscing the demise of the tyrannosaur.
When dust clouds darkened the sun which warmed their claws.
The skittering skinks, slow worms and other small lizards, who need far less to survive, then feasted upon the monsters’ flesh and found a home in its bone structured palace.
As whale sinks,
Distorted into a globster of its former self,
It hits the sea bed hard in oil-Black darkness.
The hagfish burrow, starved for millennia.
Brutally tearing at the befallen banquet.
Mouths used to scraps choking on steak.
Getting their guts knitted as they squirm over each other to grasp some sashimi.
Dripping saliva as if we’re sweat in the ruckus.
Yeti crab pinch, as do isopods
But get only mucus insulting their jaws.
And they thought they helped to cut up the portions.
Soon all that is left is a skeleton.
Hanging in a museum for future generations to see.
Once again, dust gathers, from bombed out sand.
Erupting in the air as giants hit the ground.
We may soon again see darkness fall.
As the rayiys is skinned.
But no tears are shed.
We all cheer none the less.
Aug 2, 2018
Aug 2, 2018 at 6:07 AM UTC
I pulled back the thicket
Brambles and thorns
Bordering my mind
Inch by inch
To let you slip inside
Hi
I hope you don't mind
The pestilent storm of neuroses
The angry winds whipping around
Eroding my cognition
(They all say
I ought to stop overthinking
They don't know the half of it)
Pardon the mess
The litter of apprehensions
Flotsam and jetsam of rumination
Tangles of tangents
Smog of chimeric thoughts
Sticky rambles festering in the corner
Acidic drizzle
Of obstinate wayward tunes
Insecurity and fear
Eating into the pillars and foundations
If you don't mind terribly
The clatter of sleet
The noisome fumes
The skittering vermin
The sheer clutter
That would make packrats shake their heads
If you don't mind
At all
Would you stay?
Apr 7, 2015
Apr 7, 2015 at 7:24 AM UTC
This is it.
Your big moment.
Taking time at these crossroads.
Your decision determining destiny.
A moment all your own, never to be replicated.
skittering circuits buzz, obedient to your commands.
Hours lay ahead of you, stuffed and bulging with the static you will consume.
Channel 2 or channel 4?
This is it.
Your catastrophic downfall.
An outcry was made, now the civility is shattered.
the acquaintances you once held as companions,
may now cut icy glares as the senate did to Caesar.
alarms ring, as you feel reduced in their eyes.
You got the wrong change at the cafe,
so you ask for a fiver.
later on,
your banquet awaits, golden and sunbaked.
stewed for months, in rich and creamy crop of the land.
taking your throne, in the cool shaded flank in your garden of eden.
A cup of soup and a bag of crisps.
these grand odysseys still raise up those same emotional epics,
as moments in youth locked in the past.
like lying on a blanket at the very edge of one of the seven sisters.
alas, you are still perched upon oblivion,
cup of tea in hand.
Sep 2, 2018
Sep 2, 2018 at 6:19 PM UTC
With heavy sigh
A single leaf falls
The first I've caught in the act
It slides down my right shoulder
Kissing my skin with parched lips
'Save me,'
It whispers
"No,"
I sing
A single, skittering chipmunk
Bounds across the soggy banks
Of Lake Fred
Unafraid and nearly near enough to touch
But keenly and instinctually aware
Of my innate barbarism
He keeps his distance
"Did you see that?"
I call to him
Pointing to the crumpled leaf beside me
"Summer is dying."
The chipmunk stops
Cranes its neck and twitches its whiskers in consideration
And replies
'Of course it is,
What else would it do?'
Sep 26, 2013
Sep 26, 2013 at 8:57 AM UTC
Mosquito's path
skittering 'cross
arm hairs,
loitering beyond
hearing range
Lazy flow'ry trail
leaving scent
a lovely cell
Celestial chanting
at conversation's edge
Dreams that steal 'way
in intimate folds
of everyday experience
All are discreet places
you may
hear my gentle call
to come home.
Oct 20, 2012
Oct 20, 2012 at 2:05 AM UTC
The willow tree was huge as I sat under it. Morning doves were skittering across the water.
Big willow trees hung over the water like a plump elderly lady bent over a beloved cat. The Sun was just starting to come up.
My brother looked beautiful under the willow tree, I wished I could be more like him. He stared at me; I noticed the perfect way his lips were shaped. My lips are nowhere near that pretty.
I knew how lucky I was to have him.
I secretly called him my goddess because he was so beautiful.
Wet hot tears ran down my cheeks. I couldn’t help it, everything was so overwhelming. This is the best feeling in the world.
Being in the most wonderful place, the wind blowing through my hair, with the most wonderful brother in the world.
“For heavens sake what’s the matter!”
I didn’t know how to answer that.
“It’s so pretty” I finally told him. “So pretty, pretty, pretty” I muttered to myself.
He would never understand.
Nov 27, 2011
Nov 27, 2011 at 12:57 AM UTC
He will love you presently
If you be the way you be.
Send your heart a-skittering.
He will stoop, and lift the thing.
Be your dreams as thread, to tease
Into patterns he shall please.
Let him see your passion is
Ever tenderer than his....
Go and bless your star above,
Thus are you, and thus is Love.
He will leave you white with woe,
If you go the way you go.
If your dreams were thread to weave
He will pluck them from his sleeve.
If your heart had come to rest,
He will flick it from his breast.
Tender though the love he bore,
You had loved a little more....
Lady, go and curse your star,
Thus Love is, and thus you are.
2.3k
Life is like the air;
Always changing, always moving,
We breathe it in with ever-gasping lungs
It sustains us,
Keeps us moving, keeps us going
Keeps us changing.
It flows around us, through us
In us.
...
I love the storm.
It fills the sky with power
Becomes a masterpiece of air;
The wind ripping through the trees,
Swirling skittering leaves left scattered
To dance on wet grey pavement
The unassuming air reigns supreme
Lord of the elements,
Firey and wild
Nov 10, 2021
Nov 10, 2021 at 3:05 AM UTC
The Queen of Absentia rises from royal
stool to watch the moon set sheathed
in broiling cloud as she skips whirling
adders that hiss in fat jagged coils, their
hollow blades jutting death in sprinkler
sprays of misting veils and her
head is hypethral; a Gaudi shipping
container soldered in reptile curves,
licked by arrowheads of falcate flame
as she rounds its laughing corners;
an adderaled lab rat, eyes black funnels
drinking electrodes pulsing crimson and
the stars are crackling in the pan as she
sees planets torn shrieking down Hell’s hungry
plughole as fallen Gods divide by zero
and the clock’s skittering claws scratch
prophecies of consequence of poorly
sewn seams, but she smiles like a risen
crocodile and says,
‘you’re just jealous cos the
voices only talk to me.’
And again she dives as unwanted
advice gibbers up out snapping drains,
and power points shoot sharp blue spears
lighting substrates of ancient horror, inchoate
but fattening before her eyes as she
sits, wrapped in ghosts, guarding her
ochre tea in its chalice of steaming bone,
trying to sell herself a ticket to
tomorrow’s sunrise, staring at thunderheads
bunching up satin over sodden ninjas sprouting
cardboard hair, slicing down legions of
roaring pearl as death hunts hollow-eyed below.
Her Majesty holds court, amid the percussion of
steel and plate, a matador to shadows
that clasp their hands and dance around, as
clouds hammer rain to the ground.
Jul 23, 2012
Jul 23, 2012 at 6:44 PM UTC
2 AM:
i'm falling in, and out, and in, and out,
of sleep.
my mind reaches:
arching forwards,
slowly uncurls a single finger
pinkish joints blossom
one-by-one
the slightest graze of fingernail
and what i think is real bursts into a million,
iridescent
spinning globules sent
skittering down a marble hall,
who knows how long?
but sometimes there are no marbles--
there are only shooting stars
masses of hazy, gaseous yellow
pixels, flickering and glitchering
in the corners of my eyes, hover
at my brow, drop at my feet ah...
a sadness devoid of
emotion.
like androids,
dreaming.
Sep 25, 2018
Sep 25, 2018 at 11:14 PM UTC
Silence lingers in crisp autumn air
as my feet rebound off concrete.
The uphill journey is traveled alone,
except for fellow early birds
and rare squirrels skittering across my path.
Questioning, I think, if I am threat enough
to keep them from their hunt for breakfast.
Sunlight fights its way through leaves
to flicker across my sleepy eyes.
As if the morning itself is trying to
jump start my system.
Wake me up for the long day ahead.
Finding my favorite perch
at the top of the hill,
I sit to watch campus slowly come to life.
Starting with a squirrel
and his newly found peach treasure,
and ending with the faces
of my unknown classmates.
This is Western, at 8 a.m.
Sep 19, 2012
Sep 19, 2012 at 1:05 PM UTC
I have a question: how can i not doubt? how can I expect truth after a year of silence? there was a year of silence followed by loud bursts of colour that have rendered me blind to any such truth. silence; silence breeds an illness that can only burrow far - silently - until it can dig no deeper, and where it settles is the nest of doubt you have been hiding for so long. when the eggs hatch and the baby spiders of horrible truth and revelation come skittering around those cerebral planes, you can do nothing. it is known you are in love. silence; silence breeds a want, a deep slow burn of some diseased flame on a wick that can only wither into heavy dust, and this dust too will settle and it will melt into your mind and while you doubt, you know there is a reason you doubt. you know that you doubt because you are afraid. you are afraid of the truth that the flame ignites and you are afraid of the truth that will paint the walls of your skull when the baby spiders of realisation explode from the heat of the moment. you are afraid that after this silence you are right and that you are in love and you are afraid that after this silence you are right and that he is not
and then the baby spiders do what baby spiders do best. they crawl out and they feed on your heart and you can't do a thing until it's all gone
and when it's all gone he is gone with it and you are nothing but a spider's nest of cocooned doubt and hatred, the antithesis of life
May 6, 2015
May 6, 2015 at 4:00 PM UTC
I remember creeping reverently past
The yawning maw
Snarling braches, overgrown foliage
Sad eye sockets
The defeated roof
Listing drunkenly to the left
The black spirals on the ground
Where the fire had scored earth bare
Crouched from the sanctity of the sidewalk
Damp palm snaking back to
Clasp tight
My best friend’s hand
Fear skittering up our spines
We skirted past poisonous green weeds
That swayed in the yard
Unkempt and our eyes
Darted, seeking, feral
For movement in that open doorway
Her shadow
The witch
Years pass
Looking out into suburbia
Manicured green boxes
And cookie-cutter plans
From my own cracked window
My newly acquired reno,
I spot a flash of moving colour
From beyond the overgrown hyacinths
A tousled flash of curls between the green
Puzzlement ripples as
Three lanky preadolescent forms
Snake from the protection of my shaggy firs
Thin chests taking a breath before
Their whippy arms point accusing
And I barely see a flash before
The clutched rock leaves the
Stupid-looking red headed one’s hand
Crashing through my upstairs master
And I hear it
Witch, witch, where’s the witch?
And I feel it.
My eyes beadily narrow
Peering over my bulbous nose
Shoulders hunching
Toes curl
And I reach for
The broom leaning next
The painter’s cloth
Grabbing on with knobbly fingers
Hurling myself
Out
Of
The door
Their eyes widened
Disbelieving
As they spot me
And thumbs clutched between index fingers
They run
Leaving me cackling
Breathless
While my familiar
Looks up from
Sunning her black self
On the step.
Sep 2, 2009
Sep 2, 2009 at 7:49 PM UTC
The bright white filaments
Burning behind my eyes
When I close them and lay down with
An arm over my face to block out real lights
Burned out brightness
Setting fire to pain receptors
Send bolts skittering through my pan like lightning
Or raindrops
A heartbeat multiplied tenfold
And reversed
Fluttering like butterfly wings
And mazapan
And fire in the wind.
Sleep becomes a fever dream from a nightmare
So I stay awake another night
And burn out my filaments.
Nov 30, 2014
Nov 30, 2014 at 6:00 PM UTC
Yellow, and waxy smooth in shape they spiral down
The color of banana peels and rubber ducks,
Not enough to crunch,
Just the occasional skittering sounds from an accidental nudge
Of a laced up black boot.
It’s all lit up by pouring color
Painting the world pale gold and dusty blue,
Dimpled footprints across dusty sand,
Perhaps foreshadowing of future eons of crushed cement.
Evoking an image of rusted door hinges and creaking sheds,
Orange drips from ripened fruit,
Dappled dry reds of a curling leaf or faded velvet skirt.
And down below and oil painting of bottle green glass and soft leather,
Glinting and undulating in a translucent serenity.
Paint turns to pastel further out,
Smooth hints of pink on touches of sighing blue and perfect cream with lemon zest.
Oddly blending with the metallic rumble of heavy strings,
Thin black wings
And soft fabric on palms,
Warm light and a cool breath.
Interrupted by a jolting movement of a graceful, curious silk spinner,
Who dropped, and frightened the delicate moment away.
Sep 28, 2018
Sep 28, 2018 at 10:28 PM UTC
*The Last Of Summer's Shriveled Leaves Held On,
A Blistering Wind Had Grasped Their Frail Stems,
And Ripped Each One Off Until They Were Gone;
They Fell Slow Between The Tree's Tangled Limbs
The Last Of Springtime's Robins Had Shivered,
The Orange On Their Bellies Now White From Snow,
Winter's Cruel Bite Seeping To Their Liver,
As Their Eyes Lost The Summer Sun's Stale Glow
The Last Of Fall's Lazy Currents Had Ceased,
And The River Creaked With White, Crispy: Ice,
Robins Scowered What The Ice Had Released,
Skittering Along The Banks Like Starved Mice
The Warmth Within The Trees Has Now Vanished,
The Robin's Song Was Now Chilled And Famished*
Nov 29, 2013
Nov 29, 2013 at 2:15 PM UTC
Im standing in front of a forest that is on fire
Rose colored glasses
The same tint as the flames
Theres deer fleeing, raccoon skittering into backyards
Growing red moss advancing on the trees
Blisters form on the pads of my hands and fingers
Something much bigger than the deer, is advancing
Its getting hard to breathe, my throat feels like it is on fire
Squirrels pair off, try to find their fleeing mates
Burning hair
Burning paws
Encumbered with fears
My home is charred and I cant go back
Only forward, fleeing forward with the shadowy unknown advancing in the forest behind me
Sep 2, 2020
Sep 2, 2020 at 3:50 PM UTC
I harbor a gentle whiskered beast
made of quiet sighs, all knees and elbows
jabbing my ribs while I sleep,
a weight shifting among the sheets
in the long shadows of earliness.
Suddenly, unprovoked, he is startled
as if threatened by an electric presence.
He listens intently to the silence and bristles
as though a ghost in the corner has spoken
in a tongue meant for beings higher than myself.
When the spirits have gone he sighs again,
his paws turn circles and he lays himself down
curled neatly behind my knees,
quietly pondering primal truths
that I was never meant to understand.
Outside he chases skittering leaves
and imagines he is wild
in the great wooded taiga,
flushing fowl from the brush,
scattering them like gasps of color,
with fluttering hearts beating warm in their *******
among pines capped white with snow.
Oct 8, 2013
Oct 8, 2013 at 2:22 PM UTC